July 26 - 28, 2019

SPEAKERS

Forward Leaning Software Engineer

Brian Sletten is a liberal arts-educated software engineer with a focus on forward-leaning technologies. His experience has spanned many industries including retail, banking, online games, defense, finance, hospitality and health care. He has a B.S. in Computer Science from the College of William and Mary and lives in Auburn, CA. He focuses on web architecture, resource-oriented computing, social networking, the Semantic Web, data science, 3D graphics, visualization, scalable systems, security consulting and other technologies of the late 20th and early 21st Centuries. He is also a rabid reader, devoted foodie and has excellent taste in music. If pressed, he might tell you about his International Pop Recording career.

Author of Spring in Action

Craig Walls is a principal engineer with Pivotal and is the author of Spring in Action and Spring Boot in Action. He's a zealous promoter of the Spring Framework, speaking frequently at local user groups and conferences and writing about Spring. When he's not slinging code, Craig is planning his next trip to Disney World or Disneyland and spending as much time as he can with his wife, two daughters, 2 birds and 3 dogs.

Software Architect

Jonathan Johnson is a platform architect at Intelligent Artifacts, formulating the symbiosis of an artificial general intelligence (AGI) platform with the Kubernetes ecosystem, and a software architect at Dijure LLC.

Jonathan is halfway into his second score of engineering commercial software, driven by his desire to design helpful software to move us forward. His applications began with laboratory instrument software and managing its data. Jonathan was enticed by the advent of object-oriented design to develop personal banking software. Banking soon turned to the internet, and enterprise applications took off. Java exploded onto the scene, and since then he has inhabited that ecosystem. At 454 Life Sciences and Roche Diagnostics, Jonathan returned to laboratory software and leveraged Java-based state machines and enterprise services to manage the terabytes of data flowing out of DNA sequencing instruments. Then as a hands-on architect at Thermo Fisher Scientific, he applied the advantages of microservices, containers, and Kubernetes to their laboratory management platform.

Jonathan enjoys comparing and sharing his adventures with peers. He shares ways to modernize application architectures while adhering to the fundamentals of high modularity and low coupling. A longtime resident of Connecticut, he discusses his experiences with technical groups and meetups.

Architect as a Service

Nathaniel T. Schutta is a software architect focused on cloud computing and building usable applications. A proponent of polyglot programming, Nate has written multiple books, appeared in various videos and speaks regularly at conferences worldwide, No Fluff Just Stuff symposia, meetups, universities, and user groups. In addition to his day job, Nate is an adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota where he teaches students to embrace dynamic languages. In an effort to rid the world of bad presentations, Nate coauthored the book Presentation Patterns with Neal Ford and Matthew McCullough.

Author/Entrepreneur

Janelle is author of Idea Flow, a data-driven approach to measuring the “friction” in developer experience, and making improvement decisions with science rather than gut feel. After a 17-year career as a developer, consultant, and CTO specialized in statistical process control, data supply chain, and the art of mentorship, she is now a full-time entrepreneur, building the meta tooling platform of her dreams.

Tech Leader, Vue Expert & Full Stack Developer

For nearly 20 years, Michael was a software engineer moonlighting as a magician. Now he's a magician moonlighting as a tech leader/software engineer. In both endeavors he has dedicated himself to mastery and has gained deep insights both from his eclectic interests, entrepreneurial spirit, and experience that spans the full stack, the entire project lifecycle, and several technologies.

His time is equally divided between performing around the world, jumping out of perfectly good airplanes, and building software that doesn't suck.

Founder of Agile Developer, Inc.

Dr. Venkat Subramaniam is an award-winning author, founder of Agile Developer, Inc., creator of agilelearner.com, and an instructional professor at the University of Houston.

He has trained and mentored thousands of software developers in the US, Canada, Europe, and Asia, and is a regularly-invited speaker at several international conferences. Venkat helps his clients effectively apply and succeed with sustainable agile practices on their software projects.

Venkat is a (co)author of multiple technical books, including the 2007 Jolt Productivity award winning book Practices of an Agile Developer. You can find a list of his books at agiledeveloper.com. You can reach him by email at venkats@agiledeveloper.com or on twitter at @venkat_s.

Full Stack Developer at Longplay Software

Lyndsey Padget is the founder of Longplay Software in Kansas City. As a full stack developer with over 14 years of software and web development experience at both mega-corporations and startups, she enjoys sharing in-depth knowledge on topics such as git & release management, MEAN stack development, microservices & REST, test-driven development, agile & kanban, healthy teams, diversity & inclusion, public speaking, and more. Lyndsey is involved in local organizations that encourage women, young and old, to explore careers in math and science. She believes that the difference between a good software engineer and a great one often has little to do with code.

Director / Software Architect / Meme Wrangler

Neal is Director, Software Architect, and Meme Wrangler at ThoughtWorks, a global IT consultancy with an exclusive focus on end-to-end software development and delivery.
Before joining ThoughtWorks, Neal was the Chief Technology Officer at The DSW Group, Ltd., a nationally recognized training and development firm. Neal has a degree in Computer Science from Georgia State University specializing in languages and compilers and a minor in mathematics specializing in statistical analysis.
He is also the designer and developer of applications, instructional materials, magazine articles, video presentations, and author of 6 books, including the most recent The Productive Programmer. His language proficiencies include Java, C#/.NET, Ruby, Groovy, functional languages, Scheme, Object Pascal, C++, and C. His primary consulting focus is the design and construction of large-scale enterprise applications. Neal has taught on-site classes nationally and internationally to all phases of the military and to many Fortune 500 companies. He is also an internationally acclaimed speaker, having spoken at over 100 developer conferences worldwide, delivering more than 600 talks. If you have an insatiable curiosity about Neal, visit his web site at http://www.nealford.com. He welcomes feedback and can be reached at nford@thoughtworks.com.